Keene's N.Y. opera legacy

Allan Ulrich, EXAMINER MUSIC CRITIC

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, November 8, 1995

NEW YORK - When Berkeley-born Christopher Keene died Oct. 8 of complications from AIDS, he left behind him an extraordinary six-year legacy as general director of New York City Opera. Keene was a tireless, fearless explorer of the music theater of his own time, and although the company's current production of Toshiro Mayazumi's

"Kinkakuji: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," at N.Y. State Theater through Wednesday, scarcely falls into the masterpiece category, it will serve as a reaffirmation of its late chief's vision.

Under Keene, no N.Y.C. Opera season was complete without at least one New York professional stage premiere. In addition to the Mayazumi, the 1995-96 schedule includes Paul Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler" and Jost Meier's

And in a move unparalleled in modern U.S. opera history, Keene unveiled three American works within a week. Those premieres included Hugo Weisall's "Esther," which had been peremptorily canceled by the San Francisco Opera's Lotfi Mansouri after the company had commissioned it. But the Bible-based work garnered the most critical acclaim of the three premieres, and it will be staged in an upcoming season by the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Keene had planned premieres by Charles Wuorinen and David Diamond. In a business where most Intendants are content to follow, he was a leader with a passion.

Not all of Keene's projects scored either critical or box-office successes, and it's doubtful that other companies will line up to produce "Kinkakuji," the first Japanese opera to be staged here. Based on the novel by Yukio Mishima, the work was premiered in 1976 in Berlin in a German translation by Claus H. Henneberg, and is given here in Keene's English version (he was slated to conduct it, too).

Mayazumi first came to international attention with his

"Nirvana" Symphony in an era rife with mind-altering substances, and he attracted some renown with his score for John Huston's 1965 movie, "The Bible." His interest in preserving the traditions of ancient Japan in the modern era drew him to Mishima's novel, which also served as the basis for a remarkable Kon Ichikawa film.

The story, ranging from 1935-50, concerns Mizoguchi, a young Zen acolyte who sets fire to the 500-year-old temple in Kyoto so that nobody else can despoil such a perfect monument to Japan's past. The youth is deformed, he is scorned by his parents, he is disillusioned by the monastic existence and he is unlucky in love - all of which is related in a complex time structure.

Mayazumi's musical style is bewilderingly familiar. The composer is mired in the serial, expressionist techniques of the 1960s, though he leavens the dense orchestral writing with much percussion and traditional Japanese instruments, like the shakuhachi. Interest is drawn to the pit, rather than to the drab vocal line. It leans heavily on staccato declamation and parlando; and is dominated by writing for the male voice.

In Japan, Mayazumi is familiar for his reactionary views; for a long time, he hosted a radio program, much in the spirit of Rush Limbaugh, and what he gives us here is a paranoid panorama of Japan. Monks are corrupted by their worldliness. American soldiers beat up Japanese prostitutes. Parents are weak and treacherous. Corruption is everywhere.

But, in Mayazumi's 24 brief scenes (broken by one intermission), Mizoguchi remains a symbolic abstraction, manipulated by external forces and inner obsessions rather than a fully developed antihero. And

"Kinkakuji" betrays a great disparity between its method and its message. Why, in a work about the need to preserve Japanese culture, does the composer adopt such an identifiably Western musical style?

As seen last Friday, the production by Jerome Sirlin and Laura Alley is handsome, but bewildering. Sirlin's scrim-and-projection visual style is arresting. But the multilayering (with the mature Mizoguchi onstage with his younger self) does not psychologically illuminate. The omnipresent butoh dancers, while supplying a suitable correlative to all that post-World War II Japanese angst, confuse matters. The choreography by Robert Weiss (once of N.Y.C. Ballet) doesn't quite look authentic, nor do the performers, who fail to sustain the physical discipline of butoh.

The company, however, attempts "Kinkakuji" with exceptional commitment. As Mizoguchi, baritone Eugene Perry (remembered for his Don Giovanni in the Peter Sellars production) lent the protagonist an intensity and respect for the singing line that often held the attention, despite the derivative nature of the material.

In place of Keene, N.Y.C. Opera's chorus director Joseph Colaneri conducted in the covered pit. That he unraveled so much of the score in this acoustically notorious house seems a heroic act in itself.&lt;